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Gardening with UC Master Gardeners of Inyo & Mono Counties
Inyo-Mono County
Sterilize Your Seed-Starting Soil
Published on: March 23, 2024

Are you getting ready to start some seeds for your spring and summer gardens? Maybe you have some seed starting mix leftover from previous years. It is important to use disease-free soil for starting your seedlings in order to give them the best and strongest beginning and to help prevent damping off. 

If a gardener is unsure whether their seed starting mix was free of diseases and weeds, one option is to sanitize the soil with heat. In the past we may have sterilized soil in the oven, but according to the LSU AgCenter, a quicker way to do it is in the microwave! Here's how.

Put seed starting medium in a microwaveable container. It could be a resealable, microwaveable plastic bag, or a glass dish. Make sure your soil has about 50% moisture. It will feel damp, but it won't drip liquid. If you squeeze a handful, it will form a loose clump that is easily broken up. Place it in your microwave and cook it for about 90 seconds in a 600-watt
oven. You want it to be at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Use a thermometer to verify the temperature and continue heating it in 30 second intervals until it reaches the correct temperature.

After it has cooled, you may plant seeds or start cuttings in it right away, or you may store it sealed up to a year. 

Obviously this won't treat a lot of soil, but you don't need much to start seeds. If you need a lot of soil, you may want to purchase a new bag or bale of commercial seed-starting mix.

For more gardening information, check out the Master Gardeners of Inyo and Mono Counties webpage at: https://ucanr.edu/sites/newinyomonomg .

Focus Area Tags: Yard & Garden
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UCANR: Protecting California's natural resources
The Grapevine Sphinx Moth: A Guest, Not a Pest!
Published on: August 18, 2023
 
The cooler weather lately had me performing overdue maintenance in my garden.  Cutting back some flowers on a perennial arugula plant the other night, I came across this stunning moth. Who is that? And the other all-important question I ask of all animals in my garden, no matter their good looks: friend or foe?
 
 
 
 
Turns out this one is a friend. Grapevine or Achemon Sphinx Moth, Eumorpha achemon, is fairly uncommon but a native to North America.  It is in the family Sphingidae, the hawkmoths, which is also the family for white-lined sphinx moths and tomato hornworms that are so common in our landscapes and gardens.  It has brown, pink and cream markings that make it look sort of like a dried leaf - a stunning and symmetrical dried leaf!  Adults are nocturnal and live for an average of one month.
 
 
 
 
 
The University of California reports that the huge 3 to 3 1/2 inch caterpillar eats both cultivated and wild grapes - leaves only - and is never common enough to be considered a pest. Its caterpillars look a little like tomato hornworms, and can sometimes be green but are usually a brownish pink color. When fully grown, the caterpillars burrow underground and form a reddish brown pupa the size of a short cigar.
 
Apart from this particular moth being beautiful, why should we create habitat in our yards and gardens for moths, even if this means putting up with some holes in our grape leaves? Moths are important, though often overlooked, pollinators for flowering plants. They pollinate flowers that are not visited by bees and can pollinate the same flowers as bees but do so at night. Moths are also an important food source for birds, bats, owls and lizards. 
 
Grapevine Sphinx moth is a welcome garden guest - it won't harm your prized tomatoes and will provide you with something beautiful to look at while you weed away the afternoon. 
 
A moth on a plant
 
For more information: 
Public Value: UCANR: Protecting California's natural resources
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Now What's the Problem with My Pear?
Published on: July 14, 2023

 

As winter turned into spring and the 'Bartlett' pear tree flowered and leafed out, I celebrated my great gardening success.  In fact I was jubilant because it looked as though I had finally won the battle against fire blight! For the first time in four years there were none of the telltale signs of this disease - no blackened leaves or "shepherd's crook" stem tips. For a time it looked as though I would never win, but careful pruning and rigorous attention to hygiene had finally paid off.

My only problem now was how to restore the tree into something that would justify my title of Master Gardener.

The tree had put on a lot of growth last year, and in typical pear fashion, all the new growth was fastigiate, shooting skywards with nothing but weakly attached, narrow crotch angles around the trunk and vertical stems emanating further out from the old, lateral branches. It looked a complete mess, and in spite of studying this problem over several months I had no idea how to tackle it. I became paralyzed with indecision and did nothing.

This spring, the tree was covered in flowers and set a good crop, which for once were not damaged with frost rings, and there was still no sign of fire blight. However, as I thinned the fruits I noticed that some of them were distorted, and a few of the leaves were developing blisters and brown spots suggesting that the tree had a new problem: pear blister mites.

Pear Blister Mite leaf damage
Pear Blister Mite leaf damage
Blister mites are tiny arthropods that overwinter in dormant buds then migrate to the developing leaves which form blisters around the mites, thus protecting them from the effects of sprays or beneficial insects. I had hoped that this infection would be confined to just one or two branches, but this was not to be, and it rapidly spread over the whole tree.

By this time of year there was no hope of getting any control by spraying, so my next chance will be after harvest, in October or November when the mites travel away from the leaves and take up residence in the developing buds for the winter where they are again protected from the effects of sprays.

There is a small window of opportunity during this migration, and I will check for mite activity by sampling buds at various intervals and looking at them under a strong magnifying lens in order to monitor mite activity, and then spray to control. In order to comply with organic growing principles the chief methods of control available are either oil sprays or sulfur sprays. Some pears such as comice or Anjou are damaged by sulphur which cuts down on options for those varieties.

I think that I would rather deal with fire blight!

Maybe next I will be luckier.

 

For more information:

 

Focus Area Tags: Yard & Garden
Tags: pears (2)
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